Prof. Böhm's Findings on Vaccination Behavior Published

In collaboration with other researchers, the School's Assistant Professor of Decision Analysis, Prof. Robert Böhm, has had an article published by the renown journal "Health Economics". The title of the article is "Behavioral consequences of vaccination recommendations: An experimental analysis".

The interdisciplinary team of researchers working together with Robert Böhm of RWTH Aachen University and Dr. Cornelia Betsch of the University of Erfurt - and supported by the DFG German Research Foundation - have focused their research on ascertaining whether the ways in which different countries handle their vaccination recommendations have an impact on individuals' vaccination behavior.

The findings of their study impressively demonstrate that people do react very sensitively toward vaccination recommendations and are influenced by these. On the whole, the willingness to be vaccinated is the most pronounced when there is a universal vaccination recommendation.

Thus, the study reveals a key dilemma which national health organisations are faced with, according to Dr. Cornelia Betsch: "If high-risk groups are to be effectively protected, then a specific recommendation for these particular groups is advisable. However, this procedure comes at the expense of the vaccination protection of the population at large. How meaningful a general increasing of the vaccination rate of the whole population is, needs to be equally considered so that high-risk patients can be indirectly protected through universal protection (herd immunity).